Sat./Sun., March 28 & 29

A quiet weekend. A walk around the area, email and phone
connecting with family, friend, and students, a visit from our host—she standing
in the parking lot talking to us while we’re up on the second floor entrance,
but really just doing what everyone else is doing; hunkering down.

Our host’s next
AirBnB reservation isn’t until the Iron Man race in October, so we can
certainly stay here. We just have to
make a decision about when to return to NC, then make the travel reservation,
and then go through the AirBnB reservation process. Nice to know the ball’s in our court and
there’s no terrific pressure, just the current end-date of April 18. Not sure what’s the right date, though since
we’re here, we’d be ok staying a bit longer than the crisis-end just to get in
some diving in this gorgeous place. Who
knows if that (the opening of non-essential businesses) will be possible at any
point before August…?

Rachel in NYC is back home (Saturday morning), which is an enormous relief. Other friends in NY, at least those I’m in regular contact with, are well, it seems. A few are out on Long Island, in pretty sparsely populated areas, so are feeling pretty safe right now.

Writing going ok, if slowly. Rather than concentrated sessions, seems more of a ‘little bits all day long’ approach. So by the end of the days, noticing i’ve written almost a minute’s music, but it’s all in minuscule bites of a few notes here and there. I suppose it doesn’t really matter, and that hopefully the more concentration necessary for more sustained sessions will return.

The questions being asked by so many are the same ones on our minds; what is this way of living? How has/will this change life going forward? Will we return to ‘normal’ social interaction, or will this change our sense of self in relation to community? How to engage people, be compassionate, and simply engage in sympathetic ways without physical proximity? How does society take care of its vulnerable at a time when ‘outreach’ is so restricted? How do we care for our caretakers?

What is art without communal, simultaneous experience? What does it mean to make art for ‘casts’ of only 1-2 performers, and only for a very small screen, and without consistent sound/color/picture reproduction?

What is community? How does democracy continue without face-to-face interactions, and how does a society execute democracy’s basic functions? How will we strengthen our society in response to all of this, how will we avoid attending to the improvement of our society when we’re overwhelmed with the relief of daily activities returning to normal?